


why do i wait (when i know you've got a lover)

by autoclavc



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, M/M, Pining, Radiant Dawn Spoilers, Zelgius is Zelgius, and by that he feels inadequate what else is new fam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-12 00:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20162593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoclavc/pseuds/autoclavc
Summary: alondite carries the memories of its past wielder





	why do i wait (when i know you've got a lover)

she is radiant. 

zelgius sees her in a haze of color, mingling violets and oranges to a portrait of sunset. she is alight with the sun to her back, the very image of holy. light refracted forming a halo around her, and even in her sharp features, her eyes are soft, are gentle, are the very image, too, of love. 

sephiran had always said the portraits in mainal had never done her justice. 

_ “lehran,” _ zelgius hears, spoken as one might read a poem, with a fondness palpable that zelgius could trace it with his fingertips, could feel the depths of it, and find himself unworthy.  _ “must you stand so far back?” _

zelgius shouldn’t be here. he is only their ghost, it seems, a whisper on the wind that carries a  _ “can i not admire the sunset, altina?” _ to the champion and returns her laughter in a song. he is an onlooker, he is a stranger to the little bird who perches here, on a cliff face in what will become kilvas. he is nothing in the wake of this, of her  _ “won’t you admire it closer? it’s almost below the horizon.” _

he can barely see lehran, spread pitch black wings a separate sky around him. they flutter in response to his movement, but zelgius hears his voice so clearly, hears it as well as he had in daein, and he wonders how could this ever be the same person when he says  _ “no, it isn’t” _ so light heartedly. zelgius can see his eyes though. faint purple robes are a blurry mess to him, but he can see emerald green, smiling in a way that zelgius had never seen before. 

it is difficult for zelgius to believe this is his lord because his lehran looks  _ happy. _

but the image shifts, as one might look through water and find the subject distorted, light catching on different angles and a veil of color that paints it all in a different tone. 

atlina is gone, and she always would be to the world, but to zelgius, it seemed, a man who she had never met but haunts regardless. she is gone, and what is left is a cold room and an empty bed and the darkened sky and zelgius, alone, a nations length away from the only person what had ever made him feel safe. 

and the same person for her, zelgius supposes, and he does not know if he is truly envious of a woman long buried, of a memory long put to rest and drowned in the waters that lehran could not. 

“ _ they were hers.” _ sephiran had said, waving towards the twin blades.  _ “blessed by the goddess. they will protect you well enough.”  _ but he had heard a silent undertone of  _ ‘she’ _ as well.  _ “they are yours, now, zelgius. i-” _ his lord had paused then, gathering words and quiet troubles and a lifetime of truths he couldn’t possibly describe.  _ “i am not letting you go empty handed into this. you must return, after all.” _

zelgius hadn’t known what to feel, then, in the wake of her lingering voice and the weight of his duty. 

_ do you see her when you look at me? _ is an awful little thought that takes him, because how could he ever place himself beside her, holy woman, mother of all, champion of goddess, but he is only a man with an offending heart. he cannot help but wonder it, when his fingers wrap around alondite’s hilt, and the heartache swells in him and overtakes every inch of him and he could hear her  _ “we must, lehran.” _ in a burning grief, catching flame like it did then, 800 years ago on a same sunset with silent tears. he had heard the echo of her name, spoken in raw sorrow, breaking on each syllable on the faultline of duty. he heard the cries of a lifetime never lived, of a lover never fully loved, in  _ “i know, altina.” _

he cannot help but wonder if he was only chosen to fill an empty space of a millenia, that all his troubles and the world’s sins could be enough to erase the void of all of lehran’s goodbyes. 

_ “i will not fail your kindness, my lord.”  _ zelgius had sworn, but those words did not feel enough like what he wanted to say though that, too, is of a universe indescribable. 

sephiran had shaken his head,  _ “it is not kindness, zelgius, in whatever pity you may imagine for yourself. i do not wish for you to die a nameless death.” _ but he had heard  _ ‘i do not want to lose you as i did her.’  _ but zelgius did not think that was entirely bad, however pathetic that might have seemed. it still was the kindest promise ever spoken to him. 

_ “there is still much i must do, my lord, that i will not leave you so soon, and i will never, unless on your command.”  _

his lord answered without a single hesitation, and perhaps he had been imagining it, but zelgius could have sworn that it was written in the same emotion of her name.  _ “that is a command i will never give.”  _

zelgius had held alondite and ragnell on his own, and begged for altina’s forgiveness, in both the blood that would stain it and the state of his heart. 

she answered, sometimes, in those quiet memories that he learned to accept. 


End file.
